


Green Fields

by inbatcountry17



Series: The Commander and Central [1]
Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-07-28 16:19:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 6,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7647994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbatcountry17/pseuds/inbatcountry17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before XCOM's victory over ADVENT, there was twenty years of struggle. Bradford isn't sure how he survived it.</p><p>CURRENTLY BEING EDITED</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cows

**Author's Note:**

> This is connected with my other story, Walking After Midnight, but it isn't required that you have to read that one to enjoy this one.

If you asked him what he missed most about the ‘old world’ the answer would change depending on his mood. Right about now he would do some pretty unsavory things for some clean hot water. Chances are he’d smell like smoke for a good while. By some miracle he had managed to avoid getting burned, but only just. Some people hadn’t been quite so lucky.

Two good men burned to a crisp, and a third with wounds so severe he wouldn’t last the night without heavy duty medical treatment. Treatment they didn’t have the resources or knowledge for.

They shot the man. Well it would be more accurate to say that Jackson shot him, but it wasn’t like anyone had rushed to stop her. It reminded him of the horses his grandfather used to own back in Kansas when he had been a child. One had broken its leg. He wasn’t there to witness the gunshot. All he remembered was his grandfather walking back to the farm with the rifle and a grim look on his face. It wouldn’t be until he was a bit older before he completely understood what happened.

These days human life didn’t mean much. To the aliens they were on par with horses or cows. Two things you didn’t see a whole lot of anymore. It had been three years since he had seen a bull running through what had once been farmland.

Bradford hoped he never got used to it. Never accepted it.


	2. Loss

The greatest loss mankind had ever suffered was the Commander. Bradford had somehow come to this conclusion after years of brooding twisted by whatever moonshine he could get his hands on. The Commander had been the best of them. A brilliant mind, wrapped up in enough charisma to make the sun pale in comparison. The type of person who made people comfortable putting their lives in his hands. You could trust him to know what he was doing. He saw them through to victory on every battle they fought in.

And Bradford watched him get curb stomped by a Muton on a grainy security camera.

That was probably his most persistent nightmare. He hadn’t been able to watch, having turned away before the Muton’s foot could connect with the Commander’s skull. His imagination would fill in the blanks, each time it seemed a little more gruesome.

Every morning after, he would think up a thousand and one things he could have done differently. The lives he could have saved if only he had been better than he was.

On those days all he wanted to do was remain where he fell asleep, almost unable to find the strength to face the day. A single question would echo in his head. Why? Why was he still alive?

No clear answer was ever forthcoming. He would lie there, and his mind would wander, and at some point he would remember the morning before the attack on HQ. The Commander had wandered up to the situation room with more lists of things they needed to sell on the Grey Market in hopes of affording another satellite. Somehow the man was still in good spirits, and not looking like he had only a few hours of sleep that week. Compared to Bradford who only remained functional due to a steady stream of caffeine. The Commander had looked at him, taken in all the classic signs of sleep deprivation, and smiled sadly.

_“I’m sorry, Central, but I need you to keep going a little while longer.”_

Without really thinking, Bradford would get up, grab his things, and get moving. For a little while longer at least.


	3. Heart

Bradford was not the Commander. He could organize, but he didn’t have a head for decision-making and strategy. Vahlen used to say that his heart was too big for it. That he was too afraid of people dying to be an effective leader. It made him indecisive in situations that needed quick action.

He had never thought of the Commander as callous, but that might be because he always got everyone back to base safely. He was an artist when it came to strategy.

Bradford lost a lot of people in the bid to show ADVENT that the fight wasn’t over yet. Each one knew what they signed up for, and he mourned each and every one of them. He wasn’t cut out for leading. That was something he knew deep inside. It boggled his mind why no one else saw it. Why no one more capable didn’t step up, and relieve him of this duty. There had to be someone better for the job out there. Someone who didn’t second-guess every decision made.

He wanted to fight ADVENT. Wanted to make sure they didn’t get away with everything they did, but he wasn’t the one who could lead them to victory. At best they could go down swinging.

Every night he’d take a drink for everyone they had lost, and wonder what he could have done differently.


	4. Cold

It was his first winter on the run, and it was hell. He had his survival training. Bradford could get by if it was just him, but a month ago he had fallen in with a group fleeing the large cities. Just as desperate as him to get out from under the alien’s collective thumbs.

The younger children had priority for food and what warmth they could scrounge together. Even still, they had already lost an infant and a toddler. A few parents had seen the way things were, and had given up. They headed back to the cities with their tails between their legs. Bradford wanted to hate them for it, but just couldn’t. Maybe it was the lack of energy. Maybe it was just because he didn’t want to see another child buried.

At least a smaller group was easier to hide and keep supplied. They did reasonably well given the circumstances, but frostbite was still a very real threat. They didn’t have a doctor with them. All they could rely on was Bradford’s first aid knowledge and a former veterinarian. This generally boiled down to advising everyone to keep bundled up, and keeping as dry as possible with all the snow around.

He had the feeling someone was going to lose a limb before the month was through.


	5. Entertain

Shen was brilliant. Not that that was a groundbreaking statement. She had rigged up a way to watch the pre war movies Bradford and a few others had dug up over the years. The first three Indiana Jones movies were a big hit on their first movie night. It soon became something to look forward to each week,

The problem came from choosing which movies to show. They’d gotten rid of the Alien series without even needing to discuss it. Predator soon went with it. They were going to show Star Wars, but put on Jurassic Park instead. Any movie with aliens or post apocalyptic setting in it was quickly shelved if not out right thrown away. Star Wars, Star Trek, Mad Max, Terminator, MIB, ET, all classics, and all left a bad taste in their mouths.

Bradford had been the big Star Trek fan. Now he could barely think back on it without cringing. Space wasn’t some adventure where you could find wondrous things and friendly, intelligent aliens. It was a black void where real monsters crept and plotted.  

He should have paid HG Wells more attention. Maybe he would have been more prepared for the reality.


	6. Still

The only animals anyone ever saw anymore were pigeons, and that was only near cities. Bradford didn’t know when he stopped seeing wild animals, but the day he realized it was the day he realized how still the world had gotten. He was in a forest and the only sound that was made was the crunching on the leave under his worn out boots. There had to still be insects. How else would there still be flowers? But aside form the plants it seemed like he was the only living thing for miles.

The thought made a chill run down his spine.

It was a ridiculous thought. He knew full well that if he hiked two miles west he would find a small group of people settled by a river. He had met them…sometime ago. He couldn’t say if it had been days or weeks. Just that they had met and traded briefly before he moved on, unsure of where he was going, but aware he wasn’t welcome.

Now that he thought about, was there fish in that river?

It wasn’t just people that ADVENT was killing. It was the whole damn world. Pretty soon there would be nothing left but ruins.


	7. Alone

He was awake when she left, though he pretended to still be asleep. Bradford knew that it would be a long time before he saw her again. If he ever saw her again.

The night before had been wrought from desperation and an all-encompassing emotional toll that hadn’t been eased in the slightest by what they had done. If anything, it was worse now that she had left in the early hours of the morning. The sun had barely even risen before the side of the bed she slept on was cold.

Bradford wasn’t dumb, even if she thought he was. He had known she had been planning on leaving for weeks now. Long before Shen had taken off in hopes of finding his daughter somewhere in San Francisco. There had been no stopping him any more than there was stopping her. He figured she had only stuck around this long for his sake. Part of him was grateful. Part of him didn’t want the pity.

But she was gone now, like so many before her, and he was alone.


	8. Fight

The new alien government was rounding up people like him. Old XCOM personnel and officials who refused to roll over for them. They had actual giant goddamned mechs patrolling the streets. They called them Sectopods, and they were honestly the most terrifying things Bradford had ever faced down.

Unfortunately the only way out of Manhattan had been through one. It had taken days of planning in a basement with six other people. If he were honest, then laying low in that basement had been the worst part of the whole thing. He could see activity outside through the narrow windows near the ceiling. The seven of them held their breath every time someone walked up the garden path, fearing that this was it. Their cover had been blown. Only to exhale when it turned out to be nothing.

They broke into a gun store for extra ammunition on their way out of town. The alarms had done a lot to draw patrols away from the road out, but the Sectopod had still been there. He had seen those things vaporize people at the drop of a hat. Logic said that they hadn’t stood a chance.

They had killed it, but at the cost of five of them, and more blood out of Bradford than was healthy. They added a stolen car to their list of crimes and took off as fast the piece of shit pick up truck could go. The three of them ditched it before long, and hiked into the wilderness. Bradford wouldn’t properly step foot in a city again until years later.


	9. Ulterior

Everyone had a story to tell. Bradford made it his business to know the ones belonging to the people that served under him. A lot of them sounded the same. Revenge, being a key part to them. Justice being the other.

Harvey Montoya was different.

He hadn’t trusted the man at first. It was difficult to trust someone who flat out told you they had ulterior motives when they met. Unfortunately, he was also one hell of a field medic. He had taken to Shen’s Gremlins faster than anyone else, giving them the idea to use them to not only hack, but deliver quick medical treatment in combat situations.

From what little Bradford had been able to piece together, Montoya used to work for a secret organization that didn’t necessarily oppose ADVENT, but didn’t work for them either. Harvey had mentioned screwing the aliens over a few times when their goals didn’t align. Tygan believed the group to be something of a cult that worshipped technology. Harvey admitted he wasn’t far off the mark.

While Montoya had his own agenda, he swore he had left the group behind when he joined the resistance. Even so, Bradford had the senior staff keep an eye on him. If he stepped even a toe out of line…

 


	10. Need

Bradford knew why Vahlen didn’t invite him to come with her on whatever quest she had embarked on. It was because he could disagree with her. Tell her that what she was doing was wrong.

She needed someone to tell her no, but that’s not what she wanted. The woman was as arrogant as she was beautiful, and she would brook no contradictions to the path she set in front of her.

In his loneliest moments, he would think that maybe he could swallow his own morals if it meant stopping ADVENT or staying with someone he knew. She could do the science, and he could make sure she was safe.

And that was another reason her leaving was a good thing.

He didn’t want to be put to the test like that. The likelihood of bending to accommodate Vahlen was all too high. She was going to get up to nasty things like the Commander always warned she would, and he didn’t need to be a witness to it.


	11. Bender

He couldn’t remember anything from the previous week. Nothing but a steady stream of alcohol and bad decisions. That’s all he knew.

And all he wanted to do right now was crawl back into the bottle.

The woman who had found him lying in a ditch had already hidden the booze, so that wasn’t an option. He didn’t know if it was because she didn’t want a drunk man in her house, or because she didn’t want one around her many children.

There were six of them, though Dr. Winters insisted she had seven. They had slowly started coming up to him with questions as his health improved. They were a bunch of good kids, but Bradford wished they’d leave him alone. He wasn’t in any way ready to socialize. Mentally or physically.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what the Spokesman had told him. The truth about the Commander…

Bradford would kill him if he were here. He’d put a gun to his head and pull the trigger because goddamn it-

He wanted another drink. To forget, not to remember.


	12. Ominous Crystals

He watched from up a mountain as ADVENT burned what had once been a national forest to the ground. A whole bunch of them just dropped in with flamethrowers and started going to town. The smoke was already blacking out the sky.

Bradford knew why, he had seen the contagion on his way up. It had infested almost everything along the trails. It had forced Bradford to hike off road. He had constantly been on the look out for infected animals. Who knew what those things were capable of? 

His trip to get into contact with the local resistance had turned into helping evacuate everyone before the forest fire could endanger any of their lives. They’d have to relocate miles away, abandoning the humble homes they had set up for themselves in the area.

Not that it was a surprise. ADVENT had never cared about them, and he didn’t think they’d ever start.


	13. Things

He lived in a shack these days. ADVENT was still looking for him, but only in a cursory sense. They had stopped actively searching for him a long time ago. He wasn’t important enough for anything else.

It felt like things had wound down. ADVENT didn’t search, and he no longer wandered. The shack was starting to feel uncomfortably like home these days. He even kept possessions he couldn’t carry with him. Books, things the Winters kids had made for him, old relics he had salvaged from the time before ADVENT. It looked as tacky as his old aunt’s house had been. Minus the dozen or so cats. 

It all looked like treasure to him. Everything from the mostly intact Coca-Cola sign to the video games he didn't have anyway to play even if he wanted to. With ADVENT's purges they were the last of their kinds. If he had to leave for whatever reason, he’d be sad to see them go.


	14. Avenger

Raymond Shen was long dead by the time Bradford arrived at the downed UFO that would one day become the Avenger. A fact that plagued him with the familiar sting of guilt. It seemed he was always just a little too late.

Lily Shen, the daughter he had heard so much about, had been the one to greet him. It had been the first time she had stepped out of her workshop in days. She had been so ecstatic that he had shown up. Everyone had heard about him from the late Shen. XCOM’s Central Officer, the man who saved over a dozen lives when HQ fell. The man who had been instrumental in organizing the fight against the aliens.

Funny thing, though, no one mentioned anything about how he had catastrophically failed. They were actually in _awe_ of him. There was so much goddamn hope in their eyes when they heard who he was.

It about made him want to turn tail and run. He wasn’t cut out for this. He’d get all these brave men and women killed.

Bradford mentally dug in and stood his ground. He had run away enough these past twenty years. It was about time he pushed back a little. 


	15. Hate

They say hate and anger are some of the world’s greatest motivators. It had gotten Bradford on the move again, so there might have been some truth to that.

His hatred for ADVENT had never really faded. It had just become something that burned in the back of his mind day in and day out. That wasn’t his source of motivation.

No, it was the sense of betrayal he felt. The Commander had been everything. A source of hope and of a pain so goddamn deep it sometimes made it hard to breathe. To find out that he was one of them all along…

Bradford promised the Spokesman he’s find him. He’d turn over every stone and kick over every anthill. He’d blow up a mountain if he had to. Because when he found the bastard, there would be hell to pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note: All of my stories are based around the Asaru theory.


	16. Numb

Bradford didn’t know which was worse. The aliens looking to kill them all, or the various ‘governments’ of the world helping them? They had fled from the HQ only to have to go into hiding again. They had been told to surrender and turn themselves in. They wouldn’t be harmed. _Really!_

You didn’t have to be a genius to see the bullshit. Lots of people had been rounded up. Not just XCOM personnel and supporters. It was anyone who protested.

He was still in shock. The attack on HQ, being ordered to get the senior staff to safety, the Commander’s death-

None of it had really hit him yet. He didn’t have time for it. They had stay on the move. He had to make sure that their temporary camps were secure. Try to think of something to do. Whether it be fight back or just survive, he didn’t know.

Shen wanted to find his daughter. Bradford sympathized, or he thought he should. Everything had taken on a kind of unreal dreamlike quality since their grand escape. He didn’t actually feel much of anything.

The point was that San Francisco was too dangerous. They’d almost certainly be caught. Bradford had to think about the lives of the other twenty-three people under his care. It just wasn’t a good idea.

Of course, telling a father he can’t go find his own daughter was never going to actually work.


	17. Time

Two decades was a long time. It felt like an eternity to Bradford.

He stared down at the Commander who was still recovering from the brain surgery and whatever the hell else ADVENT had done to him. It could be anything. His hair had been shaved and thick gauze was wrapped around his head, but those weren’t the only things that had changed about him. He looked, not younger, more like he was ageless. Like he could easily live for another century or beyond. It was weird, but…

The Commander was still the Commander.

Even with an alien lurking in the back of his skull. Funnily enough, Bradford thought he could maybe see a hint of the thing if he stared hard enough. It was a faint blue wisp just as his eyes would begin to strain. But that could be all in his head.

It didn’t really matter. Not now. The Resistance needed the Commander. Alien or not.


	18. Wanted

Shen parted ways with the rest of the survivors after one more argument with Bradford, which ended with resignation on both sides. But Shen didn't leave alone. He wasn’t the only one with family on the West Coast, after all. Bradford would never see any them alive again.

Twenty-three refugees under Bradford’s care turned into nineteen.

Lt. Kelly was one of the ones who went with Shen. Bradford would see his face again sometime later on the news when they reported his death. The government was saying that he had murdered Kelly because the man wanted to peacefully turn himself in. And, of course, if anyone saw John Bradford they were to call the proper authorities immediately. He was an armed and dangerous madman who should not be approached.

It was then that the reality of what the world was becoming hit him. Vahlen was there to pat his back as he broke down and handed him a cheap bottle of vodka. It would be a very long time before he stopped drinking.


	19. Close

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I messed up my shoulder pretty badly recently. It's become a chore to even write, so updates will probably be slow for a little while. On top of that, I'm kind of dissatisfied with this. Not to the point where I'm giving up on it, but a part of me wants to switch tracks for a little bit. I was thinking of maybe doing Bradford's POV during XCOM 2. I don't know yet.

The last two weeks leading up to the attack on HQ had been both exhausting and confusing. Not because of the whole ‘aliens were attacking Earth’ thing—Bradford had compartmentalized that awhile ago—no, it was because he wasn’t sure of how to define his relationship with his superior officer.

At some point, things had gone from professional to…something else. It could have been the exhaustion, the pressure, a genuine attraction, or all of the above. He wasn’t sure.

He just knew that the only time he found peace amongst the chaos had been at the Commander’s side.


	20. Hunger Pt. 1

The third winter had been a bad one. Afterwards, Bradford would remember it being one of the bleakest experiences of his life.

He was laying low in Canada when the storm hit the shantytown. Most had gotten snowed in overnight. The ones who had managed to get outside had to decide if it was worth the risk of frostbite to help their trapped neighbors.

The snow had let up for a few hours in the afternoon, and Bradford was quick to organize a rudimentary relief effort. They gathered together as many shovels, blankets, food, water, and dry wood as they could. Everyone that could be rescued was moved to the big meeting hall. The ones that had frozen in their homes were left where they were found. There was nothing they could do for them just yet. They marked the doors of the deceased for later.

At some point mid way through the winter, provisions—food in particular—had begun to dwindle dangerously low. Getting supplies outside of the ADVENT city centers was difficult in the best of times. The ones who could, usually sold what they had at ridiculous rates. They had stocked up just enough for the winter, but they hadn’t expected the freak storm to sweep in.

Bradford got some people together and went out when the snow let up. If they were very lucky, they would find some deer. He doubted it though. Best they could hope for was finding some supplies in the homes they had abandoned for their shared shelter.

He took it upon himself to check the houses of the people they had been too late to save. Only to find them empty. Of corpses, that is.

Every house they had marked was missing the bodies they had left, and other supplies that could have been valuable. Even wooden furniture had been taken.


	21. Hunger Pt. 2

Bradford did a head count every night after lights out. By January, they were missing four people. A nineteen year old man who had broken his leg, a teenage girl with asthma, and an old couple who had been the local historians. No one could adequately explain their absence. If one more person went missing without a trace he fully expected a full-blown panic to breakout.

So he headed outside armed with only a rifle, a local map, and a compass.

There were plenty of caves in the area. There was no feasible way to hike out to check them all in the current climate. But he figured anyone carrying or dragging a corpse with them couldn’t go very far.

In the forest he found small rudimentary shelters like the kind they teach you to build in the scouts on the off chance you ever get lost in a forest. With them he found the remnants of campfires under the fresh snow, and snares for animals. Some he only narrowly avoided himself.

When he did eventually catch up with his quarry it nearly cost Bradford his life. He had knelt down to examine a set of tracks when a bolt from a crossbow sailed where his chest would have been. It embedded itself into the trunk of a nearby tree instead.

Bradford simply turned, located his target, and shot the man. That was it.

He recognized him as the one who used to do maintenance on the old generator in town. Bradford took everything of value off the man and went back to town, freezing and exhausted.

The next day Bradford found the cave where the man had set up shop. He found what was left of the missing people stored away in the freezing temperature like you would deer parts. There was dry wood scavenged from furniture in town and stolen from their own stock, and hunting tools. Some of which were brand new, made from sharpened bones.

He kind of wished he hadn’t gone looking for the cave.

All he could think to do was bury the remains of the missing people, and get rid of the rest of it. The only thing he brought back was some of the wood.

There was no sleeping that night, or at any point else during the winter. Best he could do was eventually crash. What alcohol they had was kept only for medical purposes, so he spent until spring painfully sober. By the end of it all he wanted was absolute oblivion.

The minute he could, he hiked south and swore he’d never go anywhere it snowed again. And he wouldn’t…for awhile, at least.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I messed up my back so badly I can feel the pain down my arm. Expect updates to be sporadic for awhile. 
> 
> I genuinely think bad winters and summers would be devastating for people outside the ADVENT cities. Especially early on.


	22. Needle

Trying to find the Commander was like trying to find a needle in haystack. Thousands of people went missing all the time, and he was trying to track down someone over a decade lost.

It only helped a little that the Commander was so goddamn important that anything documenting him would stand out.

What the Spokesman had told him still stung, but even he could admit that maybe his initial reaction had been a little over dramatic. He blamed the booze.

Now that a little time had passed, he was almost grateful at having been told. It felt a bit like getting a wake up call. Nostalgia was a hell of a thing, and tended to warp things until they no longer resembled reality. It made him wonder how much of his memories of XCOM’s old Commander were rose tinted.

What he did know was the Commander still had the best record of anyone who had XCOM led field ops, the aliens thought he was important to them, and he was an officer that was confirmed to still be alive. Anything else beyond those points didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. 


	23. Fireworks

To Bradford, being under the influence of psionics felt like he was standing too close to fireworks going off. It made things burning hot in his head, and blinded him in a display of purple and blue colors. It was fast, violent, and then it was over. Aside from being shaken, he was never any worse for wear. If anything, the Sectoid that tried to control him was worse off. It stumbled around disoriented enough that putting a round through its cranium was a simple matter.

That is not how others described mind control.

He heard stories of purple light crawling into their heads, whispering to them and taking their thoughts. The way the victims described it was chilling. The type of stuff that could keep you up at night.

It made him wonder why he was different.


	24. Game

It was Bradford who taught the Commander how to play chess. Sort of.

When Bradford had asked if he knew how to play—expecting for the answer to be yes—the Commander smiled a little and said he only learned to play Risk as a kid. That was how they found themselves using a bit of their rare peace and quiet in the Commander’s tiny little office.

He remembered every lesson getting sidetracked with off-topic conversations that ranged from the Commander’s own brand of philosophy, to movies, to tales from past battles. Bradford’s stories were always about logistic oddities and screw-ups, while the Commander’s had been undercover work. The way he told them would make an excellent spy novel if most of what he heard didn't sound very classified. So classified it made Bradford squirm inside because none of it felt like things he should know about at his pay grade. The Commander never seemed to care. It was just the two of them in a quiet, cramped room. The war outside always felt like such a distant thing then.

Bradford remembered that feeling, but he could no longer recall the conversations. As the years went on he wished it were the other way around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, back and arm still screwed up. I'm told it's going to take awhile for this to heal. Bear with me.


	25. Barter

Growing up, Bradford had spent his time between his parents’ apartment in the city and his grandfather’s farm. Well, he called it a farm, and it had certainly looked like the land went on forever and ever when he was a little kid. In reality it was only just big enough for two horses and a large garden.

And the moonshine.

Granddad had sworn him to secrecy when he was ten about the bootleg alcohol business he ran on the side. Money was tight, he said, and the government was raising the price on everything. Don’t ever, ever, ever, _ever_ tell your parents a word about this.

Then he showed him how it was done.

It was a type of knowledge that never really came in handy in his early life. He joined the military right after high school like everyone else in his family. From there he had been recruited into Intelligence. He was never hurting for cash, so he didn't need to make his own booze. 

It wasn’t until he was on the run that he truly appreciating the lessons his grandfather had taught him. The fact that he could make it without blowing up the still made him a popular figure in some communities, even if they didn’t know who he really was.

The stuff was as good to trade as it was to get drunk. It was how Bradford was afford the equipment to repair the downed UFO’s landing gear. Shen had been reluctantly impressed.


	26. Check Up

Tygan had been both impressed and a little horrified when the results on his medical exam came back. He was a fifty-three year old man with the body of someone about ten years younger. And while he had been drinking like a fish for two decades, his liver was fine. All of him was fine actually. If he didn’t get himself shot, he’d probably live passed a hundred.

It made the doctor ask if he had been to a gene clinic recently even though they both knew full well he hadn’t. Tygan cleared him for duty, but he could tell that the doctor wanted to run further tests.

The result made Bradford realize that he should have slowed down by now, but he could still do as many pull ups and move as fast as he did when he was thirty. At this age his own father had arthritis and going upstairs had started to become a problem for him.

He was in shape. That was all. The alcohol was the only indulgence he allowed himself. He hadn’t been stuck behind a desk like dad had been. It all came down to good living.

If Tygan looked at him skeptically over the tops of his glasses when he suggested it that was just because the man was skeptical of everything.


	27. Firebrand

A hijacked, burning truck blaring down an old desert highway. ADVENT troopers screaming for a wide variety of reasons, least of all was the fire. The woman driving turning to him and smiling like she was on a theme park roller coaster.

That was how Bradford met Firebrand.

She was just ‘Firebrand’ as she would tell him later, both of them smelling like smoke and gasoline. The diner in the Resistance Haven they crashed in for drinks was abuzz with activity at the surprisingly successful mission. He watched in silence as she checked the quality of the moonshine with a battered zippo lighter before daring to drink it.

“Red means dead,” she singsonged, watching for the color the flame would turn. When it burned blue she downed the whole glass in one go.

She hadn’t been part of the team that he had led to hijack the truck. Merely a bystander who leapt to action when she could have run. Her tattered US Air Force jacket had caught his eye, but the rock solid nerves she possessed when everything was going to hell in a hand basket kept his attention. After she got involved the whole thing was just a blur of adrenaline and action. If he had to write a report up it wouldn't be coherent.

“I need a pilot,” Bradford said. “I don’t suppose you know where I can find one?”

Firebrand smiled like the Cheshire cat.

“That depends, you got an F16 lying around?” she answered. 

“Not quite. We call her the Skyranger. I’m sure it won’t take much for the two of you to get acquainted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> During Prohibition era, people would sometimes test the moonshine by lighting a small bit of it on fire. A red flame meant lead had gotten into the mixture. If it was tainted during distilling it would burn yellow. A blue flame meant the alcohol was safe. 
> 
> I should probably say that I only know this because I once caught a fascinating special on the History Channel about the history of moonshine and bootlegging alcohol in America. I've never actually made any myself.


	28. Beginning

Bradford had slept through the first alien attacks. He had been woken by his phone's ringtone about three hours before his alarm clock had been due to wake him. Had it not been General Johnson on the other end he would have thought the whole thing to be a bad prank and gone back to bed.

Switching on the TV had been all it had taken to confirm the reality of the situation. Every channel was showing an unending stream of footage of the aftermath.

The next few hours were just a blur of traveling, meetings, and interviews. At the end of it all he not only received a unprecedented, massive promotion, he was told that he would be in charge of the new XCOM Project for several days because the Commander was held up in briefings.

In spite of all the interviews he sat through where they went over every inch of his psych evaluation and record, he got the feeling he had already been given the job. It was all just formality. Like he had been chosen a long time ago. But that could just be his paranoia talking.


	29. Missing

There was half a family that lived a mile away from Bradford. A father and a daughter who was nearly sixteen. They talked on occasion. Sometimes he’d trade some of his moonshine for some of the fruit they grew in their garden. Occasionally the girl would show up for shooting lessons, a service he did for free for anyone who asked. Nevertheless, she always brought him in juice in exchange.

They called themselves half a family because the mother and the other daughter had disappeared one day. That was back when they had all been living in the ADVENT city some distance from them. They had gone into the gene clinic and had never returned. Authorities gave them platitudes and promised to investigate but nothing ever came from it. So the pair had fled, the father fearing his only remaining child would be next.

It was a story Bradford had heard more times than he could count. There was a small part of him that wanted to kick down the doors of the gene clinic to look for clues, but pragmatism won out. There was nothing to be done.

At some point, he had gone four months without hearing a peep from them. It was odd enough that he had gone to investigate. Only to find their house now looked like a battleground. He found the father’s dead body inside, and the corpse of one ADVENT stun lancer. The girl was nowhere to be found.


End file.
